1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates principally to an enhanced credit card authorization system, credit card formsets, credit card slips, and credit cards, which would be used in such a system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Credit card systems suffer from a significant number of fraudulent credit card transactions, resulting from theft and/or forgery of credit cards, dishonest merchants, and dishonest individuals who have access to credit card information and resources. A significant number of contributions appear in the prior art that are directed at reducing the incidence of credit card fraud. A review of even a fraction of said art clearly reveals the effort that has been devoted to the problem. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,745,267, issued to Davis et al., commenting on a number of techniques and systems which have met with varying degrees of success, states that an effective technique which operates within the physical parameters of conventional credit cards has proven elusive. Testimony of the continued effort to effectively minimize fraud is evidenced by U.S. Pat. No. 4,700,055, issued to Kashkashian, Jr., and U.S. Pat. No. 4,947,027, issued to Golightly, which also list and review the contributions of a number of prior art patents.
Earlier manual credit card systems and the automated on-line credit authorization systems that have followed, show that following credit card verification, a paper record of the completed transaction is produced comprising credit card and/or authorized user identifying information, and relevant transaction data. An extensive amount of work has, and continues to be directed at reducing the opportunities for fraud that a record of this information creates.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,403,793, issued to McCormick et al., provides a credit card transaction slip formset that, when one of the slips is removed, the duplicating carbons are respectively split into two sections, each section containing a portion of the customer's account number. U.S. Pat. No. 5,088,962, issued to McCartney, reviews a number of prior art patents and indicates what it views as the shortcomings of each. McCartney shows a credit card transaction form set that provides detachment of all carbon sheets associated with the customer copy of the form, and can be detached from the customer copy of the form. The prior art known to applicant has failed to appreciate that form set enhancements cannot by themselves overcome the problems resulting from unauthorized access to discarded carbon papers, discarded customer slips, or merchant slips, containing a customer's credit card number, expiration date, and/or customer name.
Similarly, patents that concern themselves with enhancements to credit cards, as for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,700,055, issued to Kashkashian, Jr., which interestingly enough, teaches combining a plurality of credit cards into a single card, the card not bearing any visually-perceptible identification of the name of the owner, or of the names of the credit card accounts represented on the card, also fail to address, much less suggest a means to eliminate disseminating identifying information in a credit card formset or invoice. While it may have been a requirement to imprint manually, and thereafter automatically, credit card information on a credit card slip, this need no longer be the case with modern on-line credit card authorization systems.
The previously referenced patent to Davis et al. suggests encoding the card blanks with account information and a verification code generated with an encoding algorithm to verify the validity of the card. While fraudulent duplication of the card is made more difficult, the card provides, in a known manner, the information required for duplication. U.S. Pat. No. 4,105,156, issued to Dethloff, teaches the inclusion of an integrated circuit on an identification card for storing a secret number, which a user must remember in order to verify that he is the authorized user of the card. U.S. Pat. No. 4,529,870, issued to Chaum discloses a card which has a microprocessor circuitry embedded within it. The circuitry generates a code which insures that only the true owner of the card can use it. The above referenced patent to Golightly, provides that when a credit card is presented to a merchant for use in a purchase, the merchant will request that the presenter identify a character from the supplemental set of characters embossed into the card to confirm the presenter's authority to use the card. U.S. Pat. No. 5,130,519, issued to Bush et al., details a chip card with an on-board keypad to provide validation of permitted use of said card through the use of a PIN code entered into a chip card by the cardholder at the time of the desired validation. None of these patents, or the prior art known to applicant, discloses an active card resident validation means that does not require a cardholder's action, and is in transparent integrated synchronized operation with an external credit authorization system.